MYSTERY AT YALE: Scientist from Woodbridge caught up in search for missing equipment during divorce

WILLIAM KAEMPFFER, Journal Register News Service

Published
12:00 am EDT, Tuesday, June 29, 2010

NEW HAVEN -- Yale police this month executed a search warrant at the Woodbridge home of a prominent scientist at the university as part of an investigation in equipment theft.

Lars Branden, a gregarious native of Sweden who has done research at that country's Karolinska Institute and at Columbia University, has not been charged with any crime, but a police document indicates the house was searched as part of a larceny investigation. He was removed from his position as the director of the Yale Center for High Throughput Cell Biology.

A court affidavit also says his university ID card, which is used to gain access to university properties, was suspended.

Recruited from Columbia, Branden started working at the Yale University West Campus, the former Bayer facility, in 2008 and was assigned the task of with building the laboratory from the ground up and hand-picking his staff. He was second-in-command at the lab, which performs cutting-edge genome research.

The university has said the multi-disciplined teams of scientists there are working to develop tools and techniques to rapidly decipher cellular functions of the 25,000 known protein-coding genes in the human genome, providing fresh insights into disease and identifying new molecular targets for therapy.

Efforts to reach Branden and his attorney were unsuccessful, and a person who answered the phone at the West Campus said Branden was "no longer in this position at the West Campus."

"I don't know his location, his whereabouts or anything," the person said.

The criminal investigation began with a complaint from Branden's estranged wife. She met with investigators on June 1 and told them that she had discovered laboratory equipment in their basement and in the garage. She provided 35 pictures of the equipment.

From the pictures, police and Bob Klein, the university's director of Environmental Health and Safety, examined identifying stickers on the lab equipment and concluded they were the same type as those used at the West Campus.

Further, serial numbers and bar codes on at least two items, a thermomixer and stereo microscope, matched ones that should have been at the West Campus, the search warrant affidavit says.

The university does not allow scientists to do work outside of the lab and employees "are not permitted at any time to take laboratory equipment off the property," police said.

Police estimated the alleged theft at approximately $22,000 and sought a search warrant as part of a first-degree larceny investigation.

On June 5, Yale police executed it at Branden's home at 13 Chestnut Lane and returned the next week and seized three more boxes of items.

The alleged theft was reported during a particularly contentious divorce.

His wife, Sara Branden, claims in court documents that Branden is a "con man" who, she now believes, married her in 2006 in order to get a green card and then, in 2009, walked out and cleaned out their bank accounts. He conned her and her parents out of approximately $150,000, she alleged.

She moved with him from New York City and put her savings into their Woodbridge house, which they bought in 2008 for $630,000 and is now in foreclosure.

"I left my career and home in New York and now I'm going to be homeless and penniless," said Sara Branden.

According to financial documents in their divorce file, he earned an annual salary of about $160,000 at Yale.

The wife told police Lars always kept the basement locked when he lived there, and only after he left did she discover the laboratory equipment. She said she never saw him bring equipment home, but added that he often would come home at 2 a.m. or later.

Profiles on Branden, who has a doctorate in cell and molecular biology, describe him as a larger-than-life personality who is proud of his Viking heritage, constructed a firing range in his backyard and sometimes hunts for his own food with a bow and arrow.

Sara Branden said Monday she learned during the divorce process that her husband had been removed from his position in 2009, not because of the alleged theft -- she hadn't even discovered the lab equipment in her basement at that point -- but because of complaints about his erratic behavior and alleged threats to colleagues.

Efforts to serve the scientist with divorce papers were consistently thwarted by Yale, which refused to let marshals on the West Campus property, Sara Branden said, and her lawyer met resistance from Yale lawyers when he contacted them for help in locating the husband.